December 15, 2009

[T]he Golden Globes have zero integrity. Studios and networks who lavishly lobby the HFPA almost always score nominations. Stars win in direct correlation to their glamour quotient. Everything about the awards is geared towards hyping the media's interest and the telecast's ratings. Even the small motley group of freelancers who belong to the HFPA won't grant membership to the real foreign journalists at the prestige newspapers across the world. NBC and Dick Clark Productions could clean up the Globes but choose not to. Instead, the entire entertainment industry props up this pathetic show because it's seen as a night-long marketing tool. Therefore, it's ridiculous for anyone to consider the movie categories as a window on the Oscar frontrunners.

it's ridiculous for anyone to consider the movie categories as a window on the Oscar frontrunners

Isn't that assuming the Oscars have any integrity whatsoever? Which they don't?

The 90s were packed with cringe-worthy winners: Dances with Wolves, Forrest Gump, The English Patient (beat Fargo!), Braveheart, Titanic, Shakespeare in Love, American Beauty. Every one of these is horribly dated even now. None of them are "great" movies.

(Silence of the Lambs and Unforgiven won in 91 and 92, respectively. They are great films with staying power.)

Maguro: At least the movie was over in a couple of hours. I slogged through the book for days, lured to suffer through the whole thing by the idea that it couldn't possibly be as bad as it actually was.

I've often heard self-described liberals use The English Patient as a delineation mark between liberals and those nasty, knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing conservatives.

It's usually something like this..."they just don't get nuances. They use crayons and we use quill pens. They like Die Hard and we like English Patient".

I've heard this more than once and would love to find out the original source. To the credit of whoever was hosting Sirius Left a few mornings ago, someone tried that thinking they were in friendly waters. The host rightfully slammed him for it.

The Globes were more of a Christmas party for the Hollyweird crowd until the nets started televising them sometime in the Seventies (maybe early Eighties). More often than not, there'd be a couple of fist fights, etc. over bruised egos, but nobody took them seriously.

Sad to say, they reflect the state of the movies over the last forty years or so.

Why does anyone care about any of these awards? If you were in the film industry I could see maybe caring. But why does the viewing public? I don't need any of these clowns to validate my taste in movies. Moreover, the Acadamy almost always gets it wrong. If you look back over the last thirty years at the movies that have won best picture, there have been a few great ones, a bunch of pretty good or mediocre ones and a few that were downright unwatchable. I honestly can't think of a reason why I or anyone not associated with the industry should care about any of these awards.

Originally, they gave out the acadamy awards in a private cerimony in a hotel ballroom. That was back when people had lives.

"It's usually something like this..."they just don't get nuances. They use crayons and we use quill pens. They like Die Hard and we like English Patient".

American liberals have to be the least selfaware people on earth. Nuances? You have to be kidding me. Once a upon a time, Hollywood made movies that had nuances. For example, Hollywood made westerns like The Searchers and Little Big Man, that while having a liberal point of view, were very creative and nuanced. Now they make crap like Avatar (which is nothing but a western set in outerspace with aliens as the indians) where every side is a complete one dimensional charactature and the entire thing is a PC revenge fantasy set in space. Nuance my ass.

Isn't the HFPA a totally shaddy organization? No one seems to know just who the hell is a member or what it takes to be one. But they are sure that being a legitimate member of the media is not a requirement.

Now...don't go smacking Avatar around. My wife and I just a baby, have a two-year-old and a five-year-old. Avatar is currently my light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel to get out of the freakin' house for an evening.

Yes, it's a retread of Dances With Wolves, but so was Last Samurai and I enjoyed that, even giving Cruise some acting kudos. The point isn't necessarily the story. In archetypal scenarios, it becomes HOW you tell the story.

Frankly, I'm in it more for the eye-candy this time out and will suffer the Mangaesque 2D characters. Cameron's a fascinating guy in and of himself. A former FX guy writ large.

They say boxing is fixed. And Pro Wrestling is only a choreographed fake show of wrestling. But that has an audience too.Where else do we get to watch movies being promoted with no regard to truth...well ABC/NBC/CBS/CNN News Broadcasts for one place.

I haven't seen it. So I don't know. But the reviews I have read say that the smurfs are so annoyingly earnest and noble that by the half way point, the viewer wants to start killing them.

The story's premise is unplausable. We have enough technology for intersteller travel and to create avatars but we haven't figured out how to rebuild a spinal cord? And have apparently forgotten how to wipe out an indiginous people?

I know every movie can't be as well written and smart as Little Big Man or the Searchers. But couldn't they at least try?

The most hated movies mentionned were some of my favorites. Driving Miss Daisey is an Atlanta story that shows the way it really was around here after 1940. Sorry about that being painful to watch. The English Patient is a great adulterous love story without the pain eliminated.I still like the message in Spielberg' s Empire of the Sun. It is a story about our fast changing world where Empires come and Empires go and survivors make it thru by using their wits, exactly like we need to do again today as the Empire of World Governance smashes its way into power over us.

I'll grant you I may be sick to my stomach with "noble savage" by act 2, but, on the other hand, they may go the "Last Of The Mohican" route and paint the primitives as earnestly flawed in their own way. I could at least stomach that.

As much as I loved the Matrix, both from a story and technical point of view, the sequels were dripping with multiculti bullshit, right down to all the bad guys being white establishment types.

"When editors and programmers no longer sustain the vision to sufficiently infotain viewership, it seems easiest to pillow-fluff peer validation dreams of players and viewers alike... into the form of pyrite-plated pot metal."

"Everything about the awards is geared towards hyping the media's interest and the telecast's ratings.""Instead, the entire entertainment industry props up this pathetic show because it's seen as a night-long marketing tool."

To Ms. Finke: Ummm... yeah. And? All awards shows are huge marketing tools, including the Oscars. What started out as a simple industry private lunch turned into the Academy Awards. So really, even that is nothing more than a business's Chicken Dinner Theater Plus Give-Away-Plaque-Night writ large.

Does Ms. Finke think that the awards started as some sort of pure award for arts sake way back when, and then morphed into this gigantic "marketing tool"? If so, she really needs to go back and take another look at history.

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Word verification: smshi. What happens to sushi when you accidentally sit on it.

knox - The 90s were packed with cringe-worthy winners: Dances with Wolves, Forrest Gump, The English Patient (beat Fargo!), Braveheart, Titanic, Shakespeare in Love, American Beauty. Every one of these is horribly dated even now. None of them are "great" movies.

You're nuts. Titanic and Braveheart are classics. Shalespeare in Love was a comedy, which critics somehow discount, then once a decade or once a generation they make awards to one since comedies help bring in the money so they can make a critically acclaimed money loser or four that they can gush over and shower with awards. "Shakespeare" happened to be one of the better comedies.And the English Patient seems to wear well as a chick flick.

Last Of The Mohicans is definitely in my top 10 favorite movies. It holds up well and, in my opinion, is one of the most enjoyable movies about early American frontiersmen ever made. I generally like Gibson, but The Patriot was gawdawful.

I'm not sure this is true. More so, it just happens to be about the entertainment industry itself. People who vote for the Best Picture were being treated to a comedy about what they do, so it seemed extra funny to those specific people.

Same thing is true for 30 Rock.

That SiL beat out Saving Private Ryan is one of the biggest Oscar fails in years.

That SiL beat out Saving Private Ryan is one of the biggest Oscar fails in years.

Well, lets be honest.

Saving Private Ryan was a great movie, but by the time it came out it was WWII buddies in combat flick #927. By that point, every plot device had been well-explored, dug up in subsequent flicks, and reused by writers churning it out in their sleep for yeat another WWII buddies in combat flick.Yes it had "great special effects" and was "gritty" - which only 229 out of the 927 WWII-buddy flicks could claim..Formula: Climatic opening scene. Buddy bonding. Another action scene. More buddy bonding as buddies meet new buddies or foes and "interesting individual quirks are explored". Tragedy! More buddy bonding. Buildup to exciting combat finale. Exciting combat finale! Good guys win, but with more tragedy! Bonded buddies later remember how poignant it all fucking was..

At least "Shakespeare" was somewhat orginal, witty comedy.

Next up, Larry David and Ben Stiller are told that after making billions for Hollywood, the Jews in charge are offering them the Spielberg Option. An Oscar if they make Holocaust movie #513. Otherwise, how will they ever be considered serious artistes??